User interaction turns dangerous

http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/11/fox-sports-lapd-threats-violent-investigation/#.Tw7gyIFRGSr

 

I hope everyone who leaves threatening comments on a newspaper site is tracked down and publicly shamed.

 

blue font?

 

Um, not so much. I agree with MonsterLobster. There are a lot of psychos out there.

 

Anything involving college football, Tim Tebow, politics, gay marriage, abortion, and immigration attracts most of those psychos.

 

The commenter done goofed, and has been reported to the cyber police.

 

Usually it's hard for me to side with anonymous asshole Internet message board posters, but the douchey way FoxSports.com wrote the story had me rooting for the guy.


**Not that I plan to physically threaten or attack any FoxSports.com staff members***

 

No, no blue font.

Maybe it's just my wiring, but I get really stressed out by the malicious, personal comments so many people leave. And I know that it's just people hiding behind the cloak of anonymity and it allowing them to show a side of themselves they would never bare in public. But that's what makes it so much worse to me. Reading comments is so often a portal to the ugliest parts of a person's thoughts. I've seen commentors attack perfectly innocent subjects, kids, other readers, private citizens not even mentioned in the story, and that's not even bringing in the personal hate and insults I've had posted about me on stories. It's common on this board for people to say, "Eh, just don't read them. It's people being idiots." I just can't help that it ruins my faith in humanity a little bit. What would you think if you were in line at the grocery store and the guy in front of you in line started openly insulting the checkers' clothes, their hair and their every move and then started on to the other shoppers standing around him? You'd think he was the biggest scumbag on the planet. So why is it OK to go and spill so much vitriol at the keyboard? It's disgusting.

And the worst part to me is that people say this why? Most of them, if you ever actually run into them and talk to them about this in person, so quickly change their opinion and tone that you'd almost doubt it was them making the original comment. The other night within five minutes of posting a column I got an email from a reader saying something along the lines of, "U are so stupid this is the worst thing i ever read you should be ashamed for this shallow thinking." I email him back, say thanks for the input, and reaffirm why I felt the way I wrote in the column. He emails back, slightly less offensive, but still telling me he was a sports writer for decades before I was even born. I email him again, say his point was taken, thanks for reading. Then, in an astonishing move, he emails me back once more and thanks me for the discussion then says he doesn't subscribe to the paper but will now because he appreciated that I took the time to be accessible for him.

It was probably the first and only time in my life I'll sell a print subscription, but it also showed me that people don't even bother to wonder if maybe there's a real person attached to a story. And if that's how people act when they think no one' looking, I have little respect for them. Back to the original point, if they're threatening violence, then I've got no qualms with them being arrested and prosecuted the same way they would be had they spoken it in person even if I know as well as you do that this guy was a keyboard tough guy who almost assuredly would never do any of the things in the message.

 

Then I'd hate to be the guy to break the story about how Tim Tebow's senatorial campaign was derailed when it was discovered that he and his gay lover privately funded abortions for illegal migrant farm workers.

 

One day, people will find this post thousands of pages deep in a Google search while researching a sex-for-drugs scandal involving President Tebow and you will be hailed as a visionary. Or a time traveler.